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Monthly Archives: June 2012

One of the most helpful ways for me to process and understand things is to read about others’ journeys– how they processed things, what they experienced and what they felt. I’m really bad at identifying and articulating how I’m feeling, so reading the words of others provides me with a gateway to understand my emotions. In addition, it provides me with the comfort of knowing that this is normal.

As such, I’m reading as many adoption memoirs and other literature that I can find. My book list can be found here, and as you can see, I’m quickly running out of books to read. Does anyone have anything to add to this list? Anything that has helped you?

What would have been the one-year milestone of my (Ultimate Life Fail) ULF recently passed.

In fact, as I’m typing a group of wonderful individuals are together celebrating their mid-point together.

It’s a group that I should be a part of, but because I just couldn’t do it, I’m here, staring blankly at the disappointment of who I’ve become.

All of this led me to reconsider, once again, what happened and what went wrong. I can’t stop thinking about how different my life would be, how different I would be if I were still on that track.

If my circumstances had been different, would I still be there?
Would I be there, celebrating my resiliency, rather than here, wondering if there’s even a shred of resiliency left in me?
Would I still be that strong person that I used to be? That person where bad things could happen and I could take an Eastern perspective and say “that’s life” and move on, unbroken?
Would I still enjoy life?

If I would have stayed and found self-worth through my actions and doing something good, would this hunger that I have for love, acceptance and belonging be as intense? Would finding my biological parents still mean everything to me?

Orphans are always hungry. You can feed them Spam and chocolate bars and poisoned apples all day long and they’ll still complain about emptiness. That’s why the government manufactures cakes made of grass. The cakes have no nutritional value, but they possess a magical property that makes orphans feel full. -Jane Jeong Trenka in Fugitive Visions

I remember how it felt as the plane began its ascent toward Japan; how part of me wanted to do something completely inappropriate so that they would stop the plane and leave me in Korea, or at least buy me more time, because, for as much as I wanted to be anywhere but there, leaving stirred up those familiar feelings of failure and disappointment. You’re leaving. You’re failing your biological parents. You’re failing yourself. Try harder. Why won’t/can’t you try harder?!Do something, dang it! If it’s that important to you, you wouldn’t be leaving, you’d be staying. What don’t you get about this? It’s simple. And yet, you can’t do it. What’s wrong with you? You can’t give them that? You’re a terrible daughter, of course they were right to give you up. What don’t you get about that? You’re humanity has been demeaned; you’re barely human. You’re a monster. And monsters don’t deserve to live.

Ashuipda: to deeply, passionately want to have or to do something, but not be able to fulfill that desire.

It’s been 20 days since I’ve returned and as much as I’d love to say that I’ve processed things and have moved on, the truth is that I’m nowhere close.

Instead I find myself at a loss and needing to sort through “the loss of my birth parents, my birth country and culture, home, someone caring for me, family, love, closeness, happiness, sadness, understanding of my beliefs, honor pride. A loss of me, a loss of who I am, a loss of what life has to offer me” (Voices From Another Place). I can’t even begin to think about these losses in a way that doesn’t leave me as a crumpled mess on the floor. So rather than processing, I shut down, or at least attempt to, because the way I see it, there’s nothing else to say that hasn’t been said and nothing left to do that hasn’t been done.

But each morning as I prepare for the day, a sense of dread hits me…dread at having to trudge through another day when all I feel like doing is curling up in a ball and giving up. You’d think that this dread would have relented by now, at least a little, however it’s only become more intense.

The process of cutting back on obligations/commitments and adding in more enjoyable activities has, ironically, exacerbated things. My life should be more organized and calm than it has been in a long time, right? Instead, the nothingnessfeels like I’ve been thrown into a state of complete disarray.

It’s like being lost in the middle of a cornfield– every direction looks the same and no matter how hard you look, you can’t find your way out; standing still isn’t going to get you any closer to finding your way out, so you walk, directionless, just to get closer toan unknown something. But after all of that walking, you’re still lost and notice that you’re hungrier than ever, emptier than ever; you become weak and begin questioning if you’ll ever find your way out or if you should just sit down and accept the inevitable.